Lime Brokerage of New York has purchased a minority stake in Bats Trading, an electronic communications network (ECN) that made a similar announcement a week ago about an investment by Lehman Brothers.
As in the Lehman transaction, Bats and Lime Brokerage, which are both privately held, did not disclose the size of the investment in dollar or percentage terms.
“On top of the Lehman investment, Lime’s participation further validates the strategy to launch a “next-generation” ECN,” says David Cummings, the chairman and CEO of Bats. “This is in the wake of the consolidation of the previous wave that included the Brut and Island ECNs, now part of Nasdaq Stock Market, and Archipelago, which merged in March with the New York Stock Exchange.”
Cummings is also the founder of the automated liquidity provider Tradebot Systems, which formed Bats last year and opened it in January. Lime has been a user of Bats for several months.